Hi All, Just received this great 1/9th scale Terminator Bust by Sergey Alekhno of ASR Sculpture.
Having seen the boxtop images with a photoshopped lit red eye I wanted to see if I could light the bust for real:
First up is to find a really small LED. I found a Japanese Company (HIQParts) which makes lighting accessories and they have the smallest LED's I have seen. They are not cheap but they provide a range of plug and play lighting stuff.
I drilled out the center of the eye using a number 52 drill bit. You need to drill a fair way in until you are about half way back into the head. I used a pin vice and drilled this bit by hand keeping the drill square on the eye as I drilled back. Next with a larger diameter drill bit, I drilled upwards from the bottom of the neck until the two drill holes intersect. You can widen the second hole with a router bit to help you find the overlap with the eye drill hole. You now have a route for wiring to run through the eye and down the neck and can also drill through the torso to take wiring down into the base. You will need to remove the end connector from the red LED in order to feed the wires through the holes but it is easily reattached, just remember to mark which of the two tiny wires is the positive before you cut them.
The LED fit perfectly into the eye hole after I had carefully bent the connecting wires at a right angle to the LED. I was also able to press fit a clear lens over the LED into the eye hole from another Japanese option set (Wave Eyes 3) the 1.8mm lens is a perfect fit. I'll probably paint this lens clear red when I get around to painting and assembling the bust.
You'll see from the final pictures that I also used HIQParts' battery box and switch (the LED runs off a standard 3 volt watch/calculator battery) and also their potentiometer which allows you to adjust the brightness of the LED (which is good as I found the LED a bit too bright initially).
Hope people find this useful, especially if like me you are a little bit scared of playing with electronics.
Having seen the boxtop images with a photoshopped lit red eye I wanted to see if I could light the bust for real:
First up is to find a really small LED. I found a Japanese Company (HIQParts) which makes lighting accessories and they have the smallest LED's I have seen. They are not cheap but they provide a range of plug and play lighting stuff.
I drilled out the center of the eye using a number 52 drill bit. You need to drill a fair way in until you are about half way back into the head. I used a pin vice and drilled this bit by hand keeping the drill square on the eye as I drilled back. Next with a larger diameter drill bit, I drilled upwards from the bottom of the neck until the two drill holes intersect. You can widen the second hole with a router bit to help you find the overlap with the eye drill hole. You now have a route for wiring to run through the eye and down the neck and can also drill through the torso to take wiring down into the base. You will need to remove the end connector from the red LED in order to feed the wires through the holes but it is easily reattached, just remember to mark which of the two tiny wires is the positive before you cut them.
The LED fit perfectly into the eye hole after I had carefully bent the connecting wires at a right angle to the LED. I was also able to press fit a clear lens over the LED into the eye hole from another Japanese option set (Wave Eyes 3) the 1.8mm lens is a perfect fit. I'll probably paint this lens clear red when I get around to painting and assembling the bust.
You'll see from the final pictures that I also used HIQParts' battery box and switch (the LED runs off a standard 3 volt watch/calculator battery) and also their potentiometer which allows you to adjust the brightness of the LED (which is good as I found the LED a bit too bright initially).
Hope people find this useful, especially if like me you are a little bit scared of playing with electronics.
